[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] jmckeejr:
Since this should not be device specific(as long as you would port the builds to your device) I figured I would post here to try and get some help taking this a little further. This thread is meant for development. I am not a developer, only using things I have found here in the forums. I am hoping to accomplish 2 things: get full Topaz or Rhodium notifications in older builds, and hopefully this could lead to changing left/right soft key actions in newer buids. These changes may or may not be able to be made by cab install, but I am thinking it has to be cooked in. I think that a cab install might throw up an error saying inseficient permissions. The files that need changed are running processes and can not be stopped without freezing the device. Dont hold me to it, I will make you a cab if you want, just thought I'd make it clear up front this is experimental.

Been playing a lot with my kitchen, and I ended up getting the new notification bubbles seen in Topaz and Rhodium to work on my 20771 builds(see screens). There is also an added benifit in this. We can have the larger bubbles and keep the old left and right soft key setup. ie: LSK=Dismiss RSK=Menu with option to choose snooze time. That means no more 5 minute snooze. The only thing I have not gotten yet is the new icons on topof the notification. Hoping someone else can help with this or offer suggestions

Here is where I am at so far: I swapped out a few parts between builds 21042 and 20771, mainly shell32.exe and gwes.exe(as well as the mui file). I am continuing to swap out parts, trying to get the icons to work. I will make a list here(second post) of all the parts I have changed so far in this attempt.It stands to reason that if we can get the icons to work here, that it might be possible to then find the correct files to make LSK/RSK in newer builds default back to the older menu style. Or, we might find that the LSK/RSK wil change when we get the icons working. Either way, I'd like to find this out. I have flashed a LOT of ROMs and found that my 20771 build has had the best battery, and is also the most stable. I would hate to give up the battery life just to have a few icons.

I found that in the 20771 build, when notification bubbles are shown they are slightly different and are shown in a "window" rather than on the images included with notification manager(Notification_BG.png). Found this whenI was changing window colors using skTools. Could someone running newer builds try using skTools to change the "Background color of a window" setting in tune up? I would like to see if newer builds are definitely using the images and not a window like older builds. When you change the color and soft reset, you can tell by looking at notifications if it uses the image or a window. This would help progress to the next stage. I would do it, and will if nobody else does first, but I do not want to flash to 21042 just to do one test.

I am not a developer, just a guy who is interested in my PPC. Perhaps a developer could step in and give some answer as to what services would be required to make this work fully. If you suggest a dll or exe or whatever, I will give it a try. What the heck, I'm flashing at least once a day anyways ;)

Here are the screens of my progress so far.